In My Blood

HALLEY COULDN’T HELP the tears that spilt down her face, mixing with the ink of the letter that had just broken her heart in a million pieces and she knew that even if she was able to put her heart back together again. She knew it would never be in the right place, there was always going to be little cracks and no amount of ice cream, sex or tissues will ever be able to make it whole again.

Her best friend had found her soulmate

She should be happy, right?

Thea Cooper didn’t have to live her life in a grey shadow anymore, constantly wondering whether she would ever meet The One because she had already, her soul had been intertwined with another and they always would be even after death, they would walk the willowy shadows of the afterlife unburdened by the stress of life, happy with the one that bought colour and light into her life

Because someone loved Thea and she loved them back in equal amounts

That’s what turned their grey world into something better and something more powerful than the world had ever seen. When you fall in love with your soulmate and they love you back, your world slowly turns from grey to colour and it stays that way for as long as your soulmate draws breath

Most people know who their soulmate is feeling a tug in their gut and they feel most relaxed and comfortable around that person. Like when you drink alcohol and you get that buzz under your skin and you get loose lips -- that’s the feeling you get when you’re with your soulmate, but there are many reasons why people don’t ever get to see in colour or meet their soulmate and it’s usually down to one of three reasons:

One) They are either dead before you get to meet them and you never know, your soul will spend forever trapped between your body and the afterlife searching for the soul that fits with you but it is unlikely if you don’t find them in this life you will find them in the afterlife, or your next life. There have been recordings of people finding the soul they were meant to be within the afterlife or next life but Halley was unsure if she believed it or not, history can often get twisted and rewritten

Two) They are already tied into marriages and relationships, blissfully unaware that there is another soul out there looking for them and then when they die the same thing happens soul wander around the afterlife trying to find the soul that was perfect for them and sometimes (most of the time) they don’t find the perfect soul and spend the rest of the time in the afterlife and the next life searching for that one soul, mostly in misery

Three) If you’re very unlucky, you already know who your soulmate is and you love them with everything within you but you’re not their soulmate and they have another soulmate meaning you were destined to live out the rest of your days and afterlife and the next life after that only seeing in black and white. But this didn’t happen very often

And somehow Halley O’Conner fits into the last two categories

Apparently the Universe hates her

You see you only get one soulmate. One person is bound to be your soulmate in this life and the next and your souls will always find each other. No matter where you end up in the next life you always have that one person who is supposed to love you. Whether it be romantic or platonic it didn’t matter. Your soulmate was yours and yours alone and nothing could come between the bond you two have.

See at first Halley didn’t panic because she thought even if Thea wasn’t her romantic soulmate then they could be platonic soulmates but her hope quickly depleted when they exchanged I love you’s while one of them was comforting the other and neither of them started to see in colour

For you two to be true soulmates, you both have to love each other

It was hard on Halley when she realised that Thea wasn’t her soulmate -- never was and never would be -- the day came when Thea excitedly rang up Halley, the redhead’s words squeaky and unintelligible as she rambled onto Halley about the man she had been dating for six months and the fact that when they said I love you to each other their worlds became brighter

It felt like her whole world had been ripped apart as if she was drowning in the sea with nothing to keep her from going and she was struggling against the waves to keep her head above water. She knew, by the way, her heart beat a little faster every time the small redhead smiled in her direction or the way her palms got sweaty every time that Thea leaned in just a little bit too close accidentally brushing her hands across her thighs -- it was absolutely maddening

She didn’t just love her best friend. She was in love with her

And that’s why when Thea and her boyfriend Max got engaged not long after, Halley’s world crumbled around her and she could do nothing but watch as her world burned around her as she stared at the now stained invitation in her hands

And she hoped she wouldn’t get burned alongside it

* * *

Faking happiness was just about as exhausting as it sounded

Her outwardly appearance was someone who embraced the changes her friend went through (the same friend who sat with her in the hospital when she was six as she nursed a broken arm after falling out a tree) as well as doing her best to make wedding planning a little easier for the redhead, who got stressed easily and cried when she became even the littlest amount of stress, so trying to plan a wedding and Thea was pulling at her curly roots as she was having a breakdown after breakdown

Planning a wedding was never easy, planning a wedding with Thea was near impossible

But still, she kept a bright smile on her face and pretended that every time she looked at Instagram posts of the soon to be husband and wife their cheesy posts with their equally cheesy captions as they counted the days down to their wedding, of course the brunette liked every post and commented how gorgeous the couple looked, even though she could only go on how they posed and the heart-melting smiles they were giving each other

You look gorgeous girlie!

OMG Max is going to be pissing himself when you walk down the aisle

Those were some of the comments she left under Thea’s recent posts, all the while her heart was breaking. Time stretched on and seconds felt like hours and minutes felt like days and hours felt like a lifetime and still, Halley felt like she was stuck in this go-between, she wanted to scream and cry and at the same time she wanted to tell Thea everything

She must have typed out a message to her a thousand times thanking Thea for being there for everything from when her first pet died when she was six to when her parents divorced three years later, Thea was there to help her through her blubbery stages, let her cry on her shoulder and get snot all over her favourite Hello Kitty t-shirt and then move onto the heavier topic of approaching her feeling saying that Thea was her soulmate even though her soulmate was another it broke her to pieces and Halley knew she was happy was Max it just hurt her every time she saw Thea with him

But then she would delete the message

And cry because as much as it hurts, she couldn’t do that to her best friend

It still hurt that night when she was at the bachelorette party, drowning her sorrows in copious amounts of alcohol. Ignoring the headache that was already forming in her head at the noise of the roaring girls as they sang loudly at the top of their lungs and told bad jokes and hollered at the bartender to keep the rounds coming

Not that Halley was complaining about the last one

“Hey” Her best friend aka the reason she was here tonight and the woman she so dearly loved but could never actually tell her slid into the booth next to her. A tipsy smile on her face and her words starting to slur together “Thank you for doing all of this and for putting up with me, I know I know I’m not the easiest person to deal with at times”

Perhaps Halley was the only one aware of how close they had gotten and the close proximity to the brunette that Thea had. So close that the smell of different alcohol’s that Thea had was infesting her nostrils and making her head spin, but that wasn’t the only reason her head was spinning -- but just like always she refrained from indulging this information out loud “No problem”

Her own words were a little joined together and if you weren’t paying attention you wouldn’t be able to tell what she said but Thea grinned, her green eyes lighting up like some kind of Christmas tree and it made heat rush to Halley’s cheeks especially when an arm was wrapped around the back of her shoulders and roughly pulled her into a hug, slurring thank you’s in her ear

Thea Cooper was mixed in her blood, just like the alcohol was and it set her alight and it broke her heart that she could never be hers.

* * *

The day of the wedding arrived and as Halley rushed around to prepare the last bits of things that she needed to do for the wedding and be the most perfect maid of honour that she claimed to be and she had already stopped one of the bridesmaids from having a breakdown over a broken nail because everything had to be just so

When she was informed the star of the show -- the person that brightened up every room she walked into -- the bride was getting cold feet and she immediately ran along the hall towards the bride suite, limping in the heels she was wearing today, honestly her and heels did not mix but whatever she could put up with it for one day

“What if I’m making a mistake?” Was the line she was greeted with as soon as she was walked through the door and it did two things: One it made her sag in relief because those are the words she had been dreaming about, but it also broke her heart because while she wanted to hear those words, it wasn’t like this

Never like this

“Do you think you’re making a mistake?” Hally implored softly

“Yes...No...I don’t know like I love him with all my heart and that’s what scares me, what if I love him too much that I end up pushing him away? What if he deserves someone better than me and by marrying me, I’m just becoming a burden to him. That’s that last thing I want” Every word that spewed from Thea’s mouth was laced in self-doubt and wracked with worry

“Okay, let me stop you right there. The man waiting for you at the alter is in love with you. He wants to marry you, you are his soulmate. The only one that is literally made for you -- I’ve never seen you as happy as you are with him and I’ve known you for a long time. You are in each other blood. He is the one that made you see colour and if you think you are making a mistake don’t for god sake force yourself into marriage because that’s what you think you should be doing. I love you and don’t want to see any harm come to you. Including from yourself”

“You really think I’m worth that much?”

“I think you are and I just want you to be happy”

A growing smile twitched Thea’s mouth “I am happy and I’m sorry I unloaded all that on you, I was just nervous that I would lose it all because I’ve never fucking been happier and it scares me”

“I’ll be here for you. Always.”

And though the words Halley spoke were true, she realised at that moment that she had -- and always would be in love with the idea and the words Thea speaks more than the actual person -- because her words and the little fantasies she had of them were mixed in her blood

Where they would stay forever.